Memoirs and morsels from home and abroad

sunday morning any time

As a teenager, I used to make breakfast for my family almost every Sunday morning.

When I turned 16, that sometimes meant driving to our local bakery to pick up a dozen bagels. But before I got my license, somehow the Sunday morning ritual involved my father running out to get fresh OJ, my mom making coffee, and my manning the pancake griddle with commentary from the peanut gallery. My dad’s main rule of thumb was “always double or triple the amount of sugar.” Sort of funny because he envisions himself a scientist (actually both of my parents are computer scientists), making backseat driver comments like, “never put reagents back into the bottle” if I measured flour over the big pink container in which we stored our flour, as I perfected my burgeoning foodie-worthy technique of slicing the flour with the back of a knife and then knocking any excess back into the “reagent source.”

Today, when I came home from a meeting with a massive headache, craving some comfort food and knowing I had at least a half-quart of milk that was approaching its expiration date, I was inspired to make this childhood memory, satisfying my carb craving and hoping for the best after popping a few NSAIDs and trusting my doctorly instincts.

The prognosis after eating this impromptu meal: pretty tasty… I think I’ll survive another day. But I may need another dose tomorrow.

Sunday Morning Pancakes – perfect anytime

I unfortunately cannot place the source of my recipe. Years ago I must have written the ingredients on a sticky and placed it on the inside cover of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (12th ed). This cookbook was given to my grandmother in 1980 and eventually passed on to me. It was the source of recipes for some of my first entertaining endeavors (Chicken Marengo, Mushroom-stuffed Chicken Breasts), but was clearly NOT my first source of inspiration. Once I find the original recipe source, I’ll update this post. Nonetheless, the steps are embedded in my memory. The trickiest part is getting the burner to the right and consistent heat.

Makes about 12-15 pancakes, depending on how large you make them. This recipe easily doubles or triples and can be kept in the fridge for a day or two, or you can make extra pancakes to freeze, and then lightly toast them during the week.

Mix together egg, milk, and shortening (if you use butter or margarine, make sure to melt first) in large bowl. Add dry ingredients to bowl and mix gently to incorporate. It’s OK for this to be lumpy, i.e., don’t beat or over-mix or make in your Kitchen Aid or other mixer. Just do this by hand.

If you are going to eat with syrup, open your bottle of pure maple syrup (yum!) and gently heat it up in a pot of simmering water while you make the pancakes.

Heat up your griddle or frying pan to medium (this always requires a bit of experimentation, but I liked it on 3 on my electric stove). You’ll know the pan is hot enough when you flick a drop or two of water and it dances around.

Melt a little butter (or cooking spray if you’re saving calories) on the griddle and drop about 2 T of batter for each pancake (I have a small pan that I use, so I scoop with a 1/4 C measure to make 2 cakes per batch).

I find that the first batch rarely comes out well, so I usually only make one per batch until I get the temperature right. This first one was set at a bit too low – you can see it’s a little light-colored. (But, that didn’t stop me from eating it!)

Adjust the flame (er, electric temperature) accordingly based on the outcome of the first pancake or two.

The way you know that the pancakes are ready to flip over is that the bubbles break and don’t cover over.

not quite ready - bubbles filling in

ready to flip - bubbles remain open, especially at edges

Don’t wait for all the bubbles to pop — it will be too late. But, once the bubbles are still forming and closing but a few start to remain open, this is the perfect time – FLIP the pancakes over now. NOW. Don’t wait for a few more bubbles. Cook the pancakes on the second side for about a minute, maybe two.

Repeat with the remaining batter. A little word to the wise: I often find that I need to lower the heat a little after the first few batches – maybe I just stop paying such close attention, or maybe the electric burner just isn’t so reliable. As I said, keeping a consistent temperature is the trickiest part of the recipe.

In my family, the pancakes disappeared as quickly as I could make them. But, if you are waiting to serve everyone at the table all at once, you can keep the pancakes warm on a cookie sheet in the oven set at ~200ºF.

If you have extra batter, you can refrigerate for 1-2 days, or better yet, make all your pancakes and stick them in the freezer. Defrost them briefly, lightly toast, and voilà — quick breakfast.

I only serve these with pure maple syrup, and hopefully by the time you’re done making your pancakes, you have heated up the maple syrup in your water. Don’t pour cold maple syrup on your nice warm fresh pancakes. It’s insulting and sad.

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13 Responses

I adore eating breakfast staples for dinner, especially when in need of a comfort meal. “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook” also sourced many of my first baking endeavors. Hope your delectable pancakes liberated your mind of the headache.

Hi Jen – Yes, breakfast for dinner is always a comfort to me. It helped my headache, though the NSAIDs probably kicked in around the same time as the food. And did you know that Fannie Farmer was originally published under the name “The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer” in 1896?

i don’t recall you making pancakes. i recall slsq making silver dollars with chocolate chips on the griddle on sunday morning. after i came back from a weekend at a friends house on cranford drive and saying we had chocolate chips pancakes, and the next weekend he started incorporating the chips.
an evolution of that is from a july 4th weekend a couple years ago in delaware with a good friend of university, where her father made them with m&ms.

I remember making pancakes on Sunday morning with the small silver dollar ones being poplular for the two small people who also liked them. Over time, those two small people managed to get more involved in the process and even started to innovate with chocolate chips being among the most favorite.

The sources of my concern about protecting the integrity of the “reagent” was from all the time I spent in my high school chemistry lab. Some times we actually did experiments involving “food” by systematically varying that amounts of the various reagents and the conditions for combining and heating them.

There was a time when Z did her own science experiment based on making pickles!

- Debi – I wonder if the vanilla was my doing or the original recipe — still trying to find original (but I add vanilla to french toast too, so maybe mine?). And I’m all about the real deal for syrup (thought I used fake low calorie stuff because I was dancing growing up).
– Heavenly Housewife – Thanks. Less fluffy than buttermilk, but not bad for a substitute.
– Dolce – I love “rescuing” ingredients.
– SLSq – Thanks for weighing in on a little disagreement in memory between the “small people” in the family. And that pickle experiment picture may make it to blog one of these days.

I agree–pancakes do offer comfort, no matter what time of day. I like the vanilla you’ve added to the batter. —I definitely agree with the warm syrup requirement…and it has to be the real deal…no exceptions.

I have a similar recipe from a friend who got it from a friend… so I don’t know where it comes from either.
And I like to throw in a ripe banana if I have one on the verge of getting overripe overnight too :)

thanks to a snowy weekend in nyc last year, i scanned all these old family photos on a beanie hp scanner that slsq sent.
we have the best slsq ever.
i even like the fact that slsq, kept the digital date on the frame 12-14-86 (i kept it in the cropped scan) oh memories.
i hope he can uncover the ‘spark in the dark’ frames from my lifesaver experiment in 6th grade.

I think pancakes are a wonderful comfort food, especially at 3 a.m. in Miami Beach when you can’t sleep because your purse with your money, id, passport, meds and lots of papers has just been stolen a couple of hours earlier from a locked car at an upscale mall. So it was out to a 24-hour restaurant that would serve pancakes at that hour….. Our newly renovated condo’s kitchen wasn’t unpacked yet.

BTW, I think I solved the mystery of the pancake recipe. It is from the Betty Crocker Cook Book and did not include vanilla. We added that as a flavoring in addition to the extra sugar that Stephen PhD (“daddy”) liked in his pancakes.

Annie – Yeah…good comfort food. Pancakes solve all problems, even if only temporarily (and I know this has been quite an annoying problem — remember when my wallet was stolen? And I know that your purse had a lot more in it!) . Thanks for solving the mystery of the recipe. The Betty Crocker Cookbook is probably the only one I didn’t take from home. I had to leave you with at least one.
Love, G

About

Hi! I'm Gayle, and here I use my Hebrew name Zahavah. I work front of house in a restaurant where I'm learning the hospitality industry from the ground up. Up until a year ago, I was a health care consultant. Also, I have an MD. Go figure! Thanks for dropping by and joining the conversation.

koshercamembert@gmail.com

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